Richard R. Burton, PhD., is a trailblazer in the field of intelligent tutoring systems, whose foundational research and practical innovations [https://richardrburton.com/publications] over five decades have helped shape how computers assist in teaching and learning.
Most recently, the DARPA Digital Tutor [https://exquisitive.com/ourStory/] achieved remarkable success – highlighted by President Obama and spawning a National Science Foundation Symposium – demonstrating how AI could match and exceed human teaching expertise and effectiveness.
In 16 weeks, the DARPA Tutor took students with zero experience in the complex domain of Information Technology and enabled them to compete with those who'd been in the field for 10+ years. And those results are repeatable, at scale. The results were independently confirmed by the Institute for Defense Analyses [https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD1002362.pdf]. We've seen this time and again with hundreds of our graduates—they arrive at their first deployment and soon become the go-to people for the toughest IT problems.
Dr. Burton continues his pioneering efforts with Exquisitive [https://exquisitive.com], where he’s applying collected insights from the groundbreaking DARPA Tutor project to transform K-12 math education.
Brief History
Richard received a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1970 where he discovered his passion for using computers to improve education. This led him to the University of California Irvine to research how to use Artificial Intelligence to build teaching systems, working with his thesis advisor, Dr. John Seely Brown [https://www.johnseelybrown.com].
During Richard's graduate studies, he followed Dr. Brown to Bolt, Beranek, and Newman in Cambridge, MA. where they worked together for five years, developing seminal artificial intelligence-based tutoring systems in the fields of electronic troubleshooting (SOPHIE), basic logical thinking (BLOCKS), and mathematics (WEST, BUGGY and DEBUGGY). Richard completed his dissertation titled "Semantic Grammar" and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Information and Computer Science by the University of California Irvine in 1976.
In 1978, after taking three months off to sail from Boston to the Bahamas, Richard joined the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)] in Palo Alto, CA. He expanded his focus on education to also include generally making computers easier to use. By 1987 Richard became Manager of the User Systems Research Group at Xerox PARC, guiding two dozen researchers on advancing all aspects of human-computer interaction.
In 1987, Richard became affiliated with the Institute for Research on Learning [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Research_on_Learning] in Palo Alto. He worked with linguists, cognitive psychologists, sociologists, educators and computer scientists to come to an interdisciplinary theory about what learning is and how it can be facilitated. In 1989 Richard shifted focus, having revealed insights on the challenges of formally embodying excellent teaching in technology, a primary barrier faced by existing disciplines along the path to educational impact.
In 1990, Richard opened his own consulting company which focused on helping companies transform new technologies into products. One of the projects he managed was a finalist for the ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award in Education and Academia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computerworld_Smithsonian_Award] for 1993.
In 1998, Richard returned to Xerox PARC as the manager of the Distributed Systems Area of the Computer Science Lab.
In 2003, Richard and his wife welcomed the birth of their son. This reawakened Richard's passion for education.
In 2004, Richard joined Acuitus, Inc., which took a promising approach to developing computer tutors that provide one-on-one learning experiences. Over the next twenty years, the team succeeded dramatically, producing the DARPA Digital Tutor program, a 16-week course in complex network and computer systems administration taught primarily by computer. The system has trained more than 1000 United States Navy recruits to be comparable to expert ITs with ten years of experience and has helped unemployed veterans start high-paying technical careers.
Richard's long-held vision of computers as effective one-on-one teachers has been validated. He sees how to achieve broad-scale, transformative impact in education, and he’s now using proven approaches to realize that potential with Exquisitive.